Are any other bloggers experiencing problems with Google Blogger? Hastings Battleaxe has been using it happily for nearly five years, but it all seems to be going pear-shaped. If you find a nerdy post about blogging platforms too boring, I’m including pictures from our cold Sunday walk to Rye Harbour and the Royal Military Canal. Battleaxe loves sparkling winter days – the dried reeds and teasels are looking particularly good right now.
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| Teasels at Rye Harbour |
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| The Royal Military Canal |
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| Rye Harbour – many birds on the water |
Part of the IT problem is about the interfaces between Google, Microsoft and Apple, with all three increasingly driven to compete rather than co-operate. To cut a long and boring story short, the Blogger App for iPad has been totally removed by Google, and the App for the iPhone will follow – it is now almost unusable. Apple won’t let you use a browser to write/edit posts on its devices via the Blogger website.
Most of the time, Battleaxe does her work on a desktop Windows PC upstairs in her study, but when I want to write a post away from home, or just want to edit something quickly, I now can’t use my Apple devices. The PC now won’t show up new Google Blogger comments, and won’t interact with the iPhone to copy photos without much fiddling about…. and so on.
This is annoying, but also worrying. By committing Hastings Battleaxe to the power of Google, on what is a free blogging platform, I have made myself vulnerable. Theoretically Google could remove all of it, or delete old posts etc. Battleaxe has over 300 posts in the archive going back to 2011, when we first arrived in Hastings. It would be terrible to lose all that work, and all those memories. So, I now have to consider moving the whole thing to a paid platform like WordPress. This will require a Man – yes, I know, Batteaxe’s shouldn’t need man-creatures to do techie stuff, but sorry, I’ll have to get one, pay him to do the work, pay for a web domain etc. Yuch. A horrible and scary thing to do in 2017.
One thing I have done is buy a very cheap Windows mini-laptop. Here it is, a natty little red Lenovo Ideapad, costing the princely sum of £149.99 from Argos. Very Christmassy, don’t you think, with it’s jolly red bauble mouse? Very light and small to carry about. It’s feeble inside, with the memory of an advanced dementia sufferer, but will do fine for on-line blogging. So far, touch wood, it seems to work well….. have written this post using it.
But, of course, I still take photos on the iPhone – yawn, scratch, now using Microsoft OneDrive tear hair……
Less of that annoying rubbish. Why is this stuff so needlessly difficult? Here are some more soothing pictures:
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| Royal Military Canal – love the Old Man’s Beard |
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| View up to Winchelsea |
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| More reeds on the canal |
This IT anxiety comes at a time when Battleaxe is getting a higher profile. I received an invitation from the Press Officer at the White Rock Theatre to attend the press night of the panto – Jack and the Beanstalk – free for me and the long-suffering Philosopher. We get drinkies and snacks as well. Of course, I’ll have to write and publish a review of the production and Battleaxe will have to mind her language and moderate her critical voice. Thinks – am I selling out by doing this? I’d hate for this blog to turn into a sanitised review puff thing.
Well, Christmas is coming….. usual rushing about….. More soothing pictures? Well, not so soothing, a bit weird, and faintly rude somehow…
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| Surreal and faintly rude shadows |
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